Thursday, 30 August 2012

Mitt Romney and the GOP Convention: a 2012 Late Midsummer Nightmare

If just about everything and anything could go wrong for the
Romney campaign this summer – except for the continuation of seemingly
bottomless special interest pockets shelling out money to keep their tax breaks
intact, defense companies and casino holdings afloat as well as support for an
even Greater Israel policy – it has.

Hurricane Isaac’s fury that stole headlines and diverted reporters from
a supposed perfectly planned convention on the Florida sands is just the latest example of
the dictum “if something can go wrong, it will.” On the other hand, why did the GOP choose Florida during hurricane
season as the place for their convention in the first place?

Even Ann Romney’s horse “Rafalca” which competed in the
dressage event at the London 2012 Olympics a couple of weeks ago didn’t make
the dress circle let alone the winner’s box.
Clearly, however, Presidential candidate Romney couldn’t have cared less
about the horse or its chances. When interviewed in one of those rare times
when a window cracked open just enough for
reporters to ask the most innocuous of questions Romney responded that he
didn’t intend to attend Rafalca’s race and, for that matter, didn’t know (and
obviously didn’t care) when it would be held.
For the record, it was held in Greenwich
Park behind the Maritime Museum on the Thames just a short Underground ride
from London.

I guess horses are just too large to be lashed to the top of even the largest SUV and forgotten. Besides his wife’s the animal lover and
people person, not him.

The Kinder and Gentler Mitt Romney? Give me a break.

On August 26, the Financial Times Edward Luce argued in an almost
fawning column that Romney’s a pragmatist who has shown he will do anything and
everything to win America’s ultimate political prize but that the Republican
Party’s current values are the real obstacle to good governance in the US: Luce argues that, therefore, it doesn’t
matter who wins the White House rather the real problem and prize is
Congress.

I’m not so sure that I agree. At least completely. Congress can impede or
assist a president principally through the power of its purse but there’s a lot
a president can do through regulation and executive order as Obama has finally
learned over the last couple of years.

Romney may well be a pragmatist in his heart but what does
this say about his principles? Does he, per chance, have any? What in fact, does the man stand for? An overriding quest for power says something
troubling in and of itself about an individual’s character.

Will he sway with every little breeze just to
stay in power – if, that is, he gains it? Does he have no scruples? How far will he stoop for four years of free
rent and his own jet flown courtesy of the US Air Force? Will he continue the George W. Bush tradition of election theft by
denying the opposition the franchise or tampering with ballot boxes in hotly
contested states like Ohio and Florida? Or is Pennsylvania
the next target? And even if such shenanigans are orchestrated
by Karl Rove and his dirty tricks operatives, how can Romney look the other way
and get away with it? Whatever happened to conscience? Who does control the party anyway?

These character flaws go hand-in-hand with Romney’s refusal
to release his tax returns. That
decision – in which his kinder and gentler wife Ann thoroughly agrees - makes me
wonder what the couple has to hide from the American voters almost all who are less
financially fortunate than they are.

Yes, I know that the quest for power – even for the
circumscribed power of the Oval Office – can be an overwhelming
aphrodisiac.

But what about the
Republican Party and control of Congress?
Does Luce have a point here?

I think the party’s problems go deeper than this columnist
suggests because the GOP's a gerrymandered coalition with tattered seams on public display. It used to be the Democrats that were the party of
the broad tent and, as a consequence, hard to control: a coalition of interests from dirt poor southerners
to wealthy Northeast liberals.

But that
relationship collapsed with the introduction of Lyndon Baines Johnson’s Great
Society Program in the 1960s that benefitted blacks, minorities and women but
not the poor, largely uneducated and resentful white rural population
concentrated in the Old Confederacy.

Grievances

Today the GOP comes across as a fragmenting collection of people exhibiting all sorts of petty grievances
and special interests held together by one single negative goal: to deny President Barack Obama a second term.
But their reasons differ from each other – and if the party gains the White House how will its leaders ever sort out the conflicting priorities? Is the motto in fact “Back to the Future?” Or something else.

Here’s the problem: a negative coalition only holds together when its supporters have something in common to fight
against – but once that battle’s over: then
what?

How can someone like Ron Paul with his anti-war,
isolationist views and antediluvian understanding of economics exist in the
same party as defense hawks and moneyed business interests? How can conservative economic business
interests which Romney presumably most represents that chafe under increased –
and in my view needed – regulation be aligned with someone who wants to get rid
of the Federal Reserve and return to the Gold Standard?

Then there are the Rick Santorums and
Michelle Bachmanns, the anti-abortion proponents, the creationists (aka
intelligent design folk) and underneath them: the racists, anti-gays and white Evangelicals
- a number of whom are, in fact, one in the same.

Moreover, don’t these people – including Mitt Romney - understand that to
replenish the country’s coffers major cuts in defense spending will be required? Squeezing domestic spending and refusing to
help fund abortions simply won’t do it.

Besides what about the country’s fraying infrastructure? Highways, for
instance? The roadbeds and bridges are crumbling in too many
states: how can the US keep claim to First World exceptionalism when
its highways equal those in Manila
after a typhoon and its public education is a disaster.

What about education?

Unemployment hits the least educated hardest: it’s not the college educated who aren’t
employable in the US. It’s the high school dropouts who suffer the
most because business has shipped most unskilled jobs overseas.

If the GOP thinks the private sector – which caused the Great
Recession in the first place – will suddenly rise up and start producing domestic jobs
again with little or no government stimulus they really need to return to
economics 101. Reduced government
spending eliminates public sector jobs – and public sector layoffs especially
at the state and local level directly relate to weak job growth and lower purchasing power. This is rather like the chicken and the egg: Fewer jobs equal a reduced tax base and less
tax revenue (the middle class pays the taxes not the wealthy or the poor) and means
less money to the IRS. Fewer jobs also negatively
affect youth employment and, therefore, increase welfare roles.

It seems to me the US
needs to learn from the EURO and the UK which through their ill-fated austerity
measures have now tipped their economies back into recession, a recession that weighs heavily on our stock market and causes havoc on youth in particular. Back to the Future anyone?

Comments

If just about everything and anything could go wrong for the
Romney campaign this summer – except for the continuation of seemingly
bottomless special interest pockets shelling out money to keep their tax breaks
intact, defense companies and casino holdings afloat as well as support for an
even Greater Israel policy – it has.

Hurricane Isaac’s fury that stole headlines and diverted reporters from
a supposed perfectly planned convention on the Florida sands is just the latest example of
the dictum “if something can go wrong, it will.” On the other hand, why did the GOP choose Florida during hurricane
season as the place for their convention in the first place?

Even Ann Romney’s horse “Rafalca” which competed in the
dressage event at the London 2012 Olympics a couple of weeks ago didn’t make
the dress circle let alone the winner’s box.
Clearly, however, Presidential candidate Romney couldn’t have cared less
about the horse or its chances. When interviewed in one of those rare times
when a window cracked open just enough for
reporters to ask the most innocuous of questions Romney responded that he
didn’t intend to attend Rafalca’s race and, for that matter, didn’t know (and
obviously didn’t care) when it would be held.
For the record, it was held in Greenwich
Park behind the Maritime Museum on the Thames just a short Underground ride
from London.

I guess horses are just too large to be lashed to the top of even the largest SUV and forgotten. Besides his wife’s the animal lover and
people person, not him.

The Kinder and Gentler Mitt Romney? Give me a break.

On August 26, the Financial Times Edward Luce argued in an almost
fawning column that Romney’s a pragmatist who has shown he will do anything and
everything to win America’s ultimate political prize but that the Republican
Party’s current values are the real obstacle to good governance in the US: Luce argues that, therefore, it doesn’t
matter who wins the White House rather the real problem and prize is
Congress.

I’m not so sure that I agree. At least completely. Congress can impede or
assist a president principally through the power of its purse but there’s a lot
a president can do through regulation and executive order as Obama has finally
learned over the last couple of years.